PA-ADOPT
The Pennsylvania Alliance for Design of Open Textbooks (PA-ADOPT) is made up of four participating institutions from Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) that are all regional and primarily undergraduate institutions, situated in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
The PA-ADOPT project will, address gaps in the open eTextbook marketplace, improve student learning, and mitigate rising student costs.
PA-ADOPT will address two emerging issues of regional and national concern. The first is the need to decrease cost of attendance for Pell eligible students and the second is the need to decrease the cost of attendance for majors needed to fill growing STEM-H (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Health Professions) workforce demands. To address these concerns, books produced by this project will focus on STEM-H and high-enrollment Writing courses, as the ability to write in a clear and organized manner is critical to the communication of scientific knowledge. We estimate that the PA-ADOPT project, could save students approximately $400.00 per year (one introductory and one advanced STEM-H course).
Funding Support
PA-ADOPT was made possible by the US Department of Education Open Textbook Pilot Program.
Goal/Aim
PA-ADOPT seeks to create a collection of high-quality eTextbooks that are freely distributed using the principles of Open Educational Resources (OER).
Objectives
Objective One
Training faculty throughout the four participating institutions to develop competencies needed to author open eTextbooks.
Objective Two
Establishment of a new process for copyediting and peer-review in addition to regular technical review of the open eTextbooks.
Objective Three
Establishment of a shared space across the PA-ADOPT institution for publishing and distributing the completed, open eTextbooks with a primary focus on student and faculty accessibility.
Objective Four
Establishment of a new process for project evaluation that includes continuous improvement of the eTextbooks based on input from faculty and students.
Participating Institutions
Timelines and Activities
Project Consortium
Project Management
The Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) at West Chester University (Principal Investigator: Marc Drumm) manages the PA-ADOPT project and associated responsibilities.
Cheyney University
- Project Evaluation: coordinating project evaluation with External Evaluator
West Chester University
- Faculty Author Training: eTextbook creation and best practices
- Copyediting: WCU WordWorks Program
- Publishing & Distribution: Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), Information Services and Technology (IS&T)
What is OER?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are instructional, learning and research materials, digital or non, that open-source and in the public domain or that are licensed so that users have free and perpetual permission to engage in the following activities:
- Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
- Reuse: the right to use the content in a wide range of ways
- Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
- Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new
- Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, revisions, and remixes with others.
